User:RedKnight7

I downloaded FTL (including AE) Dec. 14, 2014, version 1.5.13. The download package, with no auto-updating. I played this into January; all my wiki edits are based on v. 1.5.13. I almost always played regular FTL (without Advanced Edition turned on), because I think AE makes a quite random game even harder (it's hard to get the ship configurations you want). All my games were played at Normal difficulty, unless otherwise stated.

You're welcome to email me via this wiki, although after February 2015 I will have moved on to other games, and may be fuzzy or uninterested in this game any more.

But FTL is good. It's pretty cute and fun in its way. But a little too randomly difficult, evidencing a challenge for rogue-like games: It's hard to make something that is random AND interesting AND challenging without being too challenging. Non-random games can more directly tailor the game. But then, nobody ever said it was a huge game with lots of resources to make it great. It is cute and fun, but also of limited scope. And they made it too hard (to get a good loadout), to me.

You can't really plan; you just have to suffer or even give up if you've been too screwed. It would have been much nicer if it simply had greater vendor selection from the start. Not gave you more money, but just guaranteed a somewhat robust selection of gear for what little scrap you had, early on. Or maybe guaranteed you could get one of certain basic needs, so you could play in a certain vein, instead of floundering and hoping you got lucky, two thirds of the time. "Normal difficulty" should mean long-time gamers can usually do pretty well after a few games to learn the ropes.

Maybe I am saying things that go against the rogue-like grain. But it also serves to highlight why there no big rogue-like hits.

Still, it IS great fun and cute for a good while. It's certainly worth it if you think you're interested, now that it's so cheap.

I have put this on my user page instead of in the wiki per se because it is the result of my findings, and is not an extremely rigorous analysis of game results (which would probably need to include "insider" knowledge that I don't have). Said another way, results will vary and I can't be sure this applies to gameplay in general. Other users can edit this, but generally it should be in the form of a comment or question on what I did. In other words, you didn't do it and it's also not established general knowledge, so don't edit it like regular.

For most autoreward types, resources (fuel, missiles, drone parts) have fixed quantities that don't depend on the sector level. Standard autorewards provide two of these three resources: 1-3 fuel, 1-2 missiles, or 1 drone part. If we define 1 fuel as worth 3 scrap, 1 missile as 6 scrap, and 1 drone part as 8 scrap, Standard resource equivalents average to 15.33 scrap.

Perhaps the most common autoreward is Medium Standard. It's usually the reward for killing a ship (but not always, and this does not include crew kills). It provides the usual 15.33 resource scrap equivalents (from previous bullet) plus a fixed 8.7 scrap plus 6.3 scrap per sector. Thus, medium standard autorewards vary from 30.4 total scrap in Sector 1 to 74.5 in Sector 8. Or, to simplify, 6 per sector plus 24.

Another common result is DEAD_CREW_DEFAULT, which occurs in many (non unique) crew kills. This is a mix of nine possible outcomes that average to 18.0 scrap equivalents plus a fixed 9.4 scrap plus 6.7 scrap per sector. Thus it varies from 34.1 total scrap in Sector 1 to 81.0 in Sector 8. Or simply 7 per sector plus 27.

Thus, crew kills add an average of 3.7 to 6.5 scrap versus ship kills (sector 1 to 8; 5.1 on average). This is about 12% more scrap in Sector 1, trailing down to 9% more scrap in Sector 8, than Medium Standard. In summary, crew kills give about 10% higher autorewards relative to ship kills, and it's a little higher earlier in the game than later.

Game version 1.5.13 (including Advanced Edition) was downloaded Dec. 14, 2014 and played for weeks. All games are Normal difficulty unless otherwise stated. For seven games, I attempted to capture (screencap) every autoreward of any type (whether a combat result or not). A total of 4,007 screenshots were taken, although most of these were supporting info (sector map, ship condition, store offerings). For six of the games, I tried to kill crew as much as possible; the seventh had no crew kills. Only one used Advanced Edition rules (and I played as Lanius), but because this did not seem to change autoreward results per se, I did not play AE more. (AE clearly adds some events, but the autoreward system itself probably wasn't changed.)

A database of 489 autoreward records was extracted from the seven games by reviewing the screenshots and typing results into a database, including the sector number. Sectors were numbered 1 to 8, where 8 is Last Stand. The text of the autoreward screenshots was found in DATA.DAT to determine what type of Autoreward was being shown. Screenshot file names were also stored to facilitate re-checking any results, if desired. (Autohotkey made this easy since it could capture the name of the file I was viewing with {AppsKey}, then tab to my spreadsheet and insert it.) The results dataset was examined electronically and any data that looked suspicious was double or triple checked against the original screenshot. (Anomalous results might be highly suspicious, such as a resource result that didn't include 2 of the 3 resources, or slightly suspicious, such as the high or low extremes of each major autoreward type.) Thus, the data should be extremely, but not entirely, clean. (If something was mis-classified but this only made it slightly off, I probably didn't catch it.) Also, I probably did not get every single autoreward result for all seven games... I probably forgot to screencap a few kill results, each game. It was many days of game play.

These results also might not be directly comparable to player results because I saved a lot (savescumming) and even replayed a few battles many times, so I could live and get results. Making named copies of my savegames also let me bookmark, so I could even re-check highly unusual results in the game, long after I had first played it. (Beacon autoreward results for all choices across the entire sector are determined when its map is first generated.) Of course, this is not what most players will do. I probably have more combat wins than some players (and certainly more than I would have otherwise had, without savescumming). The results are still perfectly fine for analyzing how Autoreward works, but be careful of comparing how many wins and how much scrap I got in a game, versus how much you might be able to get. I cheated so I would have results evenly distributed across all sectors. Otherwise, more results would have been from early sectors, due to lots of restarts (lol).

Not all of these are combat results; these are all the autoreward results for the seven games, from all events. Also: most of the Stuff results are surrender choices that weren't accepted. The 489 results are everything that could be seen (but not necessarily chosen) in the seven games.

In DATA.DAT, Autoreward types (as shown above) are always preceded by the level word HIGH, MED, LOW, or RANDOM. In almost all cases, this level word dictates how much scrap will be awarded, and this is always dependent on the sector number. Said another way: The Autoreward type word (above) applies to resources, not scrap. The amount of scrap you'll get is dictated by the level word. (The average amount of scrap you will get from LOW weapon is the same as from LOW standard, LOW scrap_only, etc.) The "mental template" for Autorewards is like:

<level> of scrap, <type> of resources

For example, "HIGH standard" means "high scrap, standard resources".

Because all the scrap data for a given level word were indistinguishable (except as noted in next section), they have been lumped together to obtain graphs of scrap by sectors. For example, scrap from all Low types was lumped together to make its graph versus sector.

This is a very common type of Autoreward, so let's look at the resources from Standard.

It always gives two out of the three resources (fuel, missiles, drone parts). The one that is zero seems quite randomly distributed (94, 103, and 102 zero out of all 299 standard samples, respectively). When not zero, it's 1-3 fuel, 1-2 missiles, or 1 drone part.

As always, resources do not depend on sector and have an abysmal correlation. It was a flat line with R2 0.0073 correlation for resource equivalents versus sector for the 299 standard samples lumped together. Separating them out by level word made no difference.

Also, as discussed above, the level word only applies to the amount of scrap, not the amount of resources. It made no difference here; all levels of standard give them same amount of resources. And, again, it does not depend on sector.

The average amount of scrap resource equivalents from Standard is as follow:

Two of three resources are rewarded, as follows: 1-3 fuel, 1-2 missiles, or 1 drone part. That's equal to resource scrap equivalents of 6 for fuel (2.0 x 3), 9 for missiles (1.5 x 6), and 8 for drone parts (1 x 8) for a total of 23. Multiply by two-thirds because only 2 of 3 are rewarded, and the average resource equivalent for Standard autorewards is 15.33.

Observed values for resource equivalents seen are 9 (1 fuel, 1 missile) to 21 (3 fuel, 2 missiles), with an average of 15.16 ± 3.38 (std. dev. sample) for the 299 Standard records.

The "Fuel" type is unusual because its level word also applies to how much fuel you get. High Fuel gets you High scrap (as usual), but also means more fuel (range 3-6) than Medium Fuel (fuel range 2-4). No Low Fuel autorewards were witnessed, but Standard comes close anyway (0-3 fuel).

So it's clear: "Fuel_Only" only provides fuel, no scrap. It was only seen once (SLUG_SURRENDER_LIST) as HIGH Fuel_Only and gave 3 fuel (only) in Sector 5.

"Stuff" is a special case. It's used for surrender offers as RANDOM Stuff, and also used in a few other events.

Unlike most Autorewards, level words for Stuff clearly apply to resources, not scrap. But, like the other types, the resources are not dependent on sector level. (Resources never appear to depend on the sector, for any type of autoreward.)

The resources of Stuff follow the same "2 out of 3 resources" rule as other autorewards. The maximum number seen for each resource was 6 fuel, 8 missiles, and 2 drone parts. Unfortunately, most of the Stuff samples were Random Stuff from surrenders; I did not have enough of the categorized Stuff records (Low, Medium, High) to state with confidence what are the limits on how much you might get for each categorized level.

If Stuff's level word applies to resources instead of scrap, then how much scrap does it give? The answer is that it's pretty clearly a Low scrap autoreward. (3.64*sector + 5.60, R2 0.85 for all Stuff lumped together, N 40.)

Surrender is a great deal sometimes, especially early in a game, because it uses Random Stuff. If Random = High, it can be a lot of resources. You are shown Surrender values and given a choice; if you know the autoreward rule for your sector, you can tell whether it might be better to take the surrender (see below). The largest scrap equivalent possible is 6 fuel and 8 missiles, worth 66 scrap. Compare how the average Standard resources are worth 15.33, and the max possible is 21. You also get a Low amount of scrap with Stuff.

When an enemy asks to surrender, you see their offer. How will it compare to the autoreward for defeating them?

If you are not killing the crew, the Medium Standard autoreward is about 6 per sector, plus 24. This includes 15.33 for Standard resources, on average (fuel, missiles, drone parts). The total scrap value of the Medium Standard autoreward goes from 30 in Sector 1 to 75 in Sector 8.

If you are killing the crew, you can either just add a 5 to the Medium Standard result. (Add 29 instead of 24.) Or be a little more precise: 7 per sector plus 27. It goes from 34 in Sector 1 to 81 in Sector 8.

Although not all combats resolve to the usual autorewards, apparently combats with a Surrender do (as far as I can tell from reviewing DATA.DAT). If you want to be sure, you can always search DATA.DAT for the text of the offer. See if a Destroyed ship leads to DESTROYED_DEFAULT (i.e., Medium Standard) and a Dead Crew becomes DEAD_CREW_DEFAULT.

As explained above, the level word (low, medium, high) for most autorewards determines how much scrap will be awarded. This allowed data for the autoreward types shown in the autoreward table (above) to be pooled together by level and plotted versus sector (1 to 8, where 8 is Last Stand):

Scrap Level

(DCD =
crew kills)

mx + b factors

Scrap alone

Scrap + Res. Eqs.

Stats

Per Sector

(m)

Constant

(b)

Sector

1

Sector

8

Sector

1

Sector

8

R2

N

LOW

3.6757

4.7399

8.42

34.15

23.75

49.48

0.9269

126

MED

6.3066

8.7234

15.03

59.18

30.36

74.51

0.8543

216

DCD

6.7064

9.4132

16.12

63.06

34.08

81.03

modelled

HIGH

8.5216

12.2671

20.79

80.44

36.12

95.77

0.9770

129

This table shows the factors for an mx + b line equation (just for scrap), then the results of this equation for Sector 1 and Sector 8 (just for the scrap), and finally, these same scrap results plus resource equivalents for each row.

As explained above, resource equivalents don't vary by sector. For Standard autorewards, they consist of two out of three of: 1-3 fuel, 1-2 missiles, and 1 drone. When the probabilities of each are computed and then this is equated to scrap, there is a fixed value of 15.33 scrap resource equivalents for Standard autorewards, which was added to the Low, Medium, and High rows. The Dead_Crew_Default row had a fixed 17.963 added to it, as explained in the DCD section.

R2 is a measure of how well a regression line through the data correlates, where 1 is perfect (a perfect line through the data) and 0 is zero correlation (a random buckshot pattern). Correlation is high but not extremely high; there could be some additional effect going on, but it would be small. The N is the number of datapoints (autoreward screenshots) used to make that line. There was a roughly equal number of datapoints for each sector, as explained in Methods.

When scrap autorewards are plotted by sector (see figure), it's clear that their domains don't overlap: even the highest Medium scrap reward will never be as high as the lowest High scrap autoreward, in a given sector. It only overlaps for one value. In Sector 1, the maximum Medium scrap autoreward is 19, as is the lowest High scrap autoreward. So if you get an autoreward of 19 scrap in Sector 1, you can't tell if it was a Medium or High autoreward. (But you may be able to tell by finding the event text in DATA.DAT.) Anywhere else, you can tell what scrap level you got, by looking at the table below.

Exception: The Boss autorewards in the Last Stand (Sector 8) fights appear to give Sector 1 High scrap (19-23), and DATA.DAT indeed calls them High Standard. Most unusual. But then, what do the autorewards from the final fights matter?

I took the scatter plot you see in the figure (inset above) and found the outlier points (min and max boundary lines) for each scrap Level by drawing a line through the two (A and B) outlier min points (for the min boundary) and max points (for the max boundary). From those I got line equations and computed the expected boundary values for each type of scrap, by sector. (Max values were rounded down, and min values rounded up, because I already chose the most extreme values on each line. Additional values would not be expected to lie "outside" those extremes.)

I can't claim that the end result (in the table) is infallible, since it depends on the outlier points. Which means it depends on having large enough samples to get enough extreme values to get their lines right. Said another way, was there really enough spread in the figure (above) to truly define the outer-most boundaries of each spread?

Unless you want to do even more work than I have done in order to make your own, larger dataset (say, 3 or 10 times larger than my 7 games' worth), just assume it's (almost) always right:

Scrap

Level

Sector

based on Line Equation m(sector-1) + b

from Point A to Point B

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

m

b

Sector

Scrap

Sector

Scrap

High

Max

23

32

41

50

60

69

78

87

9.25

23.00

1

23

5

60

Min

19

27

35

43

51

58

66

74

7.80

19.00

1

19

6

58

Medium

Max

19

26

34

42

50

57

65

73

7.75

19.00

1

19

5

50

Min

12

16

21

26

31

36

40

45

4.80

11.20

2

16

7

40

Low

Max

10

14

18

22

27

31

35

39

4.25

10.00

1

10

5

27

Min

7

10

13

16

19

22

25

28

3.00

7.00

1

7

5

19

What's the practical value of this?

You should be able to tell what scrap Level you just got from any autoreward. Let's say you got 53 scrap from a Sector 5 crew kill. Did you get a Medium or High (Standard) DCD result? The table shows you that 53 is a High scrap result for sector 5 (51-60).

FTL poses a challenge: You can get more rewards by performing crew kills, but it's more expensive to perform crew kills. They tend to take a bit longer (during which time you are damaged more = expensive) and they generally require you to buy a second set of "weapons" (to give you boarding capability and crew survival) in addition to the direct weapons and defenses which you will also still need. Perhaps not as much when you can also crew kill, but still at least some, especially in the all-important early sectors.

Before we can answer the question of whether it is worth it, we must first answer the question, how much is it worth - what's the reward for crew kills? Then we'll compare this to the reward for regular ship destruction, which is typically the Medium Scrap autoreward seen above.

Most crew-kill battles resolve into the event list called DEAD_CREW_DEFAULT in DATA.DAT. You can easily find it in DATA.DAT by searching for its text strings. You will know you encountered it if you see EXACTLY the text shown. It consists of nine equally-likely outcomes as follows:

Count

Autoreward

Text

3

Medium Standard

"There are no more life-signs remaining on the ship.

You strip it of useful materials."

2

High Standard

(Exact same as above, so you can't tell the difference based on text.)

2

High Fuel

"With the crew dead, you are able to take the fuel out of storage.

You also take all the scrap you can manage."

1

Low Weapon

"You find a weapon system on their ship.

With no crew to stop you, you can install it on your own."

1

Low Scrap_Only

& One Crew

"Now that their ship has been emptied of hostiles, you search it.

Eventually you find a prisoner who offers to join your crew."

As seen in "Autoreward Types and Resource Rewards", the level word (Low, Medium, High) dictates how much scrap you will get. Notice that there are two Low, three Medium, and four High scrap levels. At first glance you might think two Lows will "cancel" two Highs, and what's left might be midway between Medium and High. But if you look more closely at the Scrap Per Sector table, you see that Low is less than half of High; if a Low and a High are averaged, the result is less than Medium. Further, if you let two Lows cancel two Highs into something a little lower than Medium, you actually now have seven Medium (the three existing, plus the four from cancelling) and two Highs left. This is why the Dead_Crew_Default average for scrap is only a little higher than Medium, per sector. Three regular Medium plus four slightly low Medium plus two Highs equals something only a bit higher than Medium. (But it's clearly better when you also include resources and other goodies, the Resource Equivalents in the table above.)

This occurs with a 3/9 (33%) chance. It gives the same result as Medium Standard for non-crew ship kills, as seen in Scrap Per Sector and the DCD Breakout table. As usual, it gives the scrap resource equivalent of 15.33 scrap in fuel, missiles, and drone parts.

As discussed in Autoreward Types and Resource Rewards above, High Fuel gives the same High amount of scrap per sector (just like in the graph), but a different amount of resources. Namely, 3 to 6 fuel. Unlike the Standard type, it always gives fuel (and only that, for resources). You get it for 2 out of 9 DCD results.

That's a calculated average of 4.5 fuel, times 3 equals 13.5, for the DCD resource equivalent calculation. As always, the amount of fuel did not vary by sector.

The observed value was 4.84 ± 1.19 fuel, N=37. It is possible that there is more going on than a simple average of 4.5, but it is also possible the real average is 4.5. With a standard deviation of 1.2, 4.5 is not far at all from 4.8.

For the record, there were also seven Medium Fuel events seen (not with DCD, of course). For these, fuel was 2-4 with an average of 2.71 ± 0.76.

This is a simple Low scrap result, plus a random weapon. (No resources.) The expected scrap for Low level can be seen elsewhere. But what should we consider the value of the weapon to be, for DCD calculations?

This depends on style of play and luck. Sometimes you have all you need, so the weapon is unusable, and will be sold for half scrap. Other times, especially early, it could be a godsend. Here's a good table of weapons and costs. Non-unique (rewardable) weapons are about 45 to 110 scrap, with most from 50 to 75.

I didn't spend too long on this. I considered that a third of the time I'd get a useful weapon worth maybe 60. The rest of the time I'd sell it. So I picked 40 out of the air. I used this as the fixed value of the Low Weapon result for DCD. If you want to change or drop it, feel free. You want to add a ninth of its value to the fixed (b constant) portion of the DCD line equation.

This is a lot like the Low Weapon calculation. The scrap from Scrap_Only is entirely consistent with Low level keyword. You get no resources (fuel, missiles, drone parts). So what's the crewman worth?

Although I've almost never bought one, they're still highly valued early in the game because you could really use more hands. They might even be critical for crew killing. But late in the game, you might be turning them away - they are practically worthless.

I didn't spend too long on this. I made a little table saying the crew would be worth 50 to me in Sector 1, 40 in Sector 2, on down to 0 by Sector 6. If you add these values you get 150, then divide by 8 for 18.75. Then I rounded to 18, shrug (easily divisible by 9). The average value of a crewman across FTL sectors.

I used this as the fixed value of the Low scrap result for DCD. If you want to change or drop it, feel free. You want to add a ninth of its value to the fixed (b constant) portion of the DCD line equation.

In my 489 autorewards, it was seen nine times. Seven with Standard results (2.3% out of 299), two with Stuff results (5.0% out of 40). I triple-checked their screenshots to make sure I got these events and autorewards right, since it's so unusual.

If we presume that it has an equal chance of happening with Standard or Stuff results so we can pool them, it has about a 2.7% chance (9/339; 1 in 38). It may be specific to these two autoreward types because it wasn't seen for any of my other 150 autorewards (489-339; see table at Autoreward Types and Resource Rewards) when it might have been expected ~4 times, but it's hard to tell because perhaps it happens with some of the other types (but not all), or I was simply unlucky.

Maybe it's twice as likely for Stuff, and the chances are something like 2.5% for Standard and 5.0% for Stuff. This can't be stated with any certainty, however, when all it took was one lucky roll to double my Stuff observations.

Ordinarily you can't tell Medium from High Standard with DCD (the text is the same), but the amount of scrap put both DCDs squarely on the Medium line.

So, what is the overall worth of the bonus? If it happens about once every 40 of the common autorewards, notice that weapons are arguably worth about 40 scrap (including cashing in some of them; see my DCD Low Weapon comments). That is to say, the bonus item sort of gives you an average of 1 scrap per autoreward, for these common types (Standard and Stuff).

Maybe (maybe!) twice as much for Stuff... and if it's presented as a surrender offer, it's easy to see and take.

So it's clear: Bonus gifts and their calculated added average of 1 scrap per autoreward have not been figured into anything else on this page. This info stands all on its own in this section.

In summary, about every 40 autorewards you get a cool bonus item, for the common types (Standard and Stuff). Since it happened 9 times in 7 games, it happens a little over once a game.

Here, I present the Stats from a number of my games as a basis to make some a few statements. Be careful if you compare your own games, because I was savescumming to make it easier to get data. And play. Heh. My results are higher than I might have gotten because I played some fights over and over, instead of escaping or dying. Likewise, I simply quit games that were too painful (too unlucky) to try to complete; their results don't appear at all.

Here's the formula for Score. That Score page has some inaccuracies. Here are some fine points about the Score stats:

Escape doesn't count as a defeat, nor does accepting Surrender. Surrender also won't provide as much Autoreward scrap, even with a good Surrender offer. It will be a Low scrap offer, versus Medium or High for most defeat events. But you can get high Surrender resources, if they make a nice offer.

Contrary to what is written elsewhere, the extra 10% scrap from the Scrap Recovery Arm does not increase your score; it has no effect on it. I did not test whether the Repair Arm decreases it, but it's a bad idea anyway.

Three types of beacons will not increase your Beacons Explored count:

Revisited beacons

Rebel-held beacons, whether behind enemy lines in a normal sector, or a random enemy-held one in the Last Stand sector. You can always tell these because you only get 1 Fuel from them.

The Boss beacons never count (none of them). If you savescum and kill yourself (vent ship) just before the Boss fight, you will have the same number of Beacons Explored at Victory despite jumping to three more. All in all, beacons counts in Sector 8 are usually much lower than other sectors.

As stated above, the Boss also gives less Autorewards scrap than ordinarily expected. It gives an amount equal to High Standard, for Sector 1 (not Sector 8), 19-23 scrap.

Boss defeats do not increase your Defeats counter.

Usually, none of these points matter, because they are the same for everyone (everyone's Score is made the same way).

But if you are looking closely at your stats and perhaps want to use them to estimate, e.g., the amount of scrap per sector or per kill, you should be aware of them. For example, you may not want to include Sector 8 results in averages because it's usually much lower than other sectors.